Trounce Alley Lighting Company

Our new Modern Studio Equipment “hostess tray” style side mount in action on a Dodge Viper Powered SRT-10 Ram. We’re in beautiful Kelowna, BC at the moment on our third feature with the ever popular Vancouver based independent cinematographer Norm Li. It stars up and coming english actor Luke Goss previously known as part of the brit pop duo Bros. It is directed by Justin Donnelly from TV The Troop.

Modern Studio Deluxe Hostess Tray on "Pressed" set with Norm Li

… yes we are way behind on our posts — !

Contact us if you’d like to rent our car mounts or find out more about flying Norm’s lighting balloon.

This time lapse from the first portion of a 6 day film shoot at VFS with director Michael Chayse — Head of Production for VFS Entertainment — shows what can be done with TALCO’s 5-ton lighting and grip package truck out of the box.

Vancouver Film School’s equipment was booked by multiple graduation projects from the cinematography program. Michael was leading an inter-department collaboration between the school of business and post production code named Project Space Squid, which involved students, faculty, and alumni. The project was based on the sci-fi cosmic horror writing of HP Lovecraft, an american writer from the turn of the century.

Michael needed professional lighting to bring Lovecraft’s surreal Cthulhu Mythos to life.

VFS Entertainment turned to our grip truck to convert an unused space which had no lighting grid into a functioning green screen studio with lights and equipment. We performed lighting services while business management students oversaw the shooting of 5 short films. They were titled: C’Thulhu, Dagon, Dunwich, Erich Zahn, and Rats.

The students are maintaining a comprehensive blog of their progress in post production.

The project was overseen by VFS head of the Entertainment Business Management department, Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, who also produced a 7-minute behinds the scenes documentary of the production titled, The Interactive Lovecraft.

Further there are some photos taken by a student here.

The VFS press department seems to be on a roll with this project…more will follow.

Factoring in 41 years of inflation since Woodstock ’69 LOVE has somehow managed to stay free in Canada suggests, The Higgins, in their first single from their second album, Dreamers Like us, which is scheduled for release in Spring 2010.

Official music video for “Free Like Love” by The Higgin.
Directed by multiple award-winner Stephano Barberis and produced by Arkadia Pictures Inc.

Scroll down for a technical lighting summary of the setup.

The Higgins are John, Eileen, and Kathleen Higgins, brother and sisters, from Delta, BC, Canada.

Lighting Summary:

We rigged the stage for cinematographer Ron Williams C.S.C with a 4×8′ softbox above the band.

The rig consisted of 3 blondes and a frame of 216 diffusion. It was built with pipe and burtons from a goalpost allowing it to “pendulum” down so the angle of light would be less overhead and more in the eyes of our talent. Due to the weight of the rig our goalpost consisted of three 20′ schedule 40 pipes (1 1/2″ Aluminum) joined together into a triangle formation using Modern Studio Equipment mini-truss brackets. We cranked the rig up in super-crank roller stands (12.6′ max height). The wheels on the stand allowed us to roll the entire rig closer to the camera to make the lighting more frontal for the closeups.

Of primary concern to Ron was beauty lighting for the band’s two female musicians.

In addition tot he softbox over the stage we filled from over the heads of the crowd using a 10k fresnel through a 6×6 frame of half grid cloth. We used solid blades and flops to cut most of the spill off the crowd so it would project over their heads into the eyes of our band. There was also two tungsten units on the ground through diffusion frames to fill from below the stage in front of the band because that was the direction they would look down at the crowd. These units were hidden from camera between the crowd and the stage on the ground.

TALCO built a 4x8' softbox with pipe & burtons and suspended it over the band with a makeshift 20' truss on super cranks. A 10k key through a 6x6 frame cut off the crowd provided fill.

Technical Notes:

If doing a similar rig consider using a specialized truss lifting support from the theatre/live event industry in place of super-crank stands. They are usually load rated much higher then super-cranks and some of them can go upwards of 20′ in height which would be a huge asset if the stage was any higher (compared to 12.6′ for a super-crank stand).

Also consider using real truss for less sag across the span. We used ropes and pulleys from the truss of the studio to safety our rig but if you didn’t have access to a lift to get up there you’d certainly want to make your truss more rigid.

We provided additional fill from tungsten units on the ground through 24'x36' Diffusion Frames hidden from camera between the crowd and the stage.

Behold, a RED Camera underslung on TALCO’s Porta Jib standard. The picture may be old, but we thought it looked neat enough to post. It’s turning into a busy summer.

The dolly belongs to Peter Reynolds and is an Italian made version of Chapman’s Peewee Dolly. It crabs and has an excellent hydraulic boom movement. Notice how we have triangulated the legs on the dolly (front wheels square at 90 degrees, back wheels parallel at 0 degrees) for a smoother dance floor style move — a trick we learned from Peter himself.

RED Cam underslung on Porta-Jib using an Italian Peewee pedestal

On the subject of old photos, here’s another one of the Italian peewee dolly in action for us.

Reynolds Peewee Dolly behind the scenes on UTAB

TALCO works with Clif Prowse to capture the arrival and installation of the Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit. We installed camera mounts for a week long time lapse documenting the event. One camera was rigged from the top of the Grant Court catwalk. The other was rigged 20′ in the air from a giant support column in the Atrium Court. We used Modern Studio mounts, an L-bracket cheeseplate, ratchet straps, and some ingenuity. Photos attached. The exhibit remains standing at Metropolis at Metrotown.

T-Rex at Metropolis at Metrotown

HVX200 with a MSE ball leveling mount

Ratchet Strap and L-Bracket Cheeseplate mount

Closeup of ratchet strap/ L-cheeseplate rig

Beach fun at Burnaby Lake — Director Mitch Bax of Monument Pictures completes a choreographed music video for Brandon Paris Band. The song ‘Can’t Hate You,’ plays out entirely in four steadycam takes operated by Pieter Stathis with cinematography by Randy Che.

We rigged the house with MSE (modern) pipe spreaders to keep our movie lights out of view of the roaming steadycam. The camera chases a girl around the house and exposes band members who crawl out of the cupboards to try to charm her.

Yesterday to our great delight, Tony Dean of RED Rad introduced us to veteran key grip — Peter Reynolds — the mastermind behind their RAD Cam. Peter showed us his light-weight aluminum fabricated towers which can suspend the rig overhead in no time to fly a camera affordably. He also offered us use of his privately owned Italian-made crab dolly to subrent on our truck! Read below for more details about his amazing hydraulic dolly. The deluxe model with beer holders is coming soon….

The Peter Reynolds Peewee Dolly can be pre-loaded on TALCO's 5-ton truck!

We’ve coined it the term, Reynolds Peewee dolly. This is a well machined Italian version of the American Peewee dolly, not to be confused with a cheap asian knock-off. In fact, this is the only one of it’s kind in Canada. Peter has done a nice job restoring it and it comes in sexy matte Black finish, with plush italian leather. That might be an exaggeration, but smoothness of the arm is not. In fact, the Italian Peewee dolly arm movement is much better then an actual Peewee crab dolly. We tried it ourselves and agreed.

Once the workhorse of Peter Reynolds fleet of grip trucks, the Italian crab dolly has been reconditioned like new to serve again. Thanks to him you don’t need to pay the standard $600/day for a hydraulic crab dolly. You can have a smooth hydraulic arm in a compact, full featured dolly; for less.

Reynold's hydraulic crab dolly soon to feature an 8-pack beer holder

For those not familiar with the hydraulic crab dolly — like everything American — they are a carefully controlled commodity which is only available by lease and never to own, by two manufacturers: Chapman-Leonard who makes the Peewee, Hustler, and Hybrid dolly, and J.L Fischer who makes the Fischer 11, Fischer 10.

These two giants control a monopoly. They only build so many units, so there is no supply, and it creates a demand. No one can own the dolly so there is no way to discount it. Even the rental house has to pay a lease to Chapman or Fischer every month for the privilege of renting the crab dolly to its customers. The design of the hydraulic crab dolly dates back to World War II. Originally manufactured to load bombs into airplanes, are these dolly’s really manufactured by Lockheed-Martin for Hollywood? It’s a conspiracy theory in the making.

Years ago an Italian company reverse engineered the Peewee dolly, rebuilt it with standardized machined parts for mass distribution, and outfitted it with a better hydraulic system. Chapman sued the shit out of them and banned sales in North America, crippling thier revenue and sending them out of business before they could establish a mass-production line and bring the hydraulic crab dolly to people like you and I.

Fortunately Peter Reynolds bought one of these units in their prime and brings the Italian crab dolly back to us now! In fact, TALCO can pre-load the Reynolds Peewee dolly on our truck today!